Risk Management Book Review Brungardt,

Risk Management Book Review

Brungardt, CL & Crawford, CB (1999). Risk Leadership: The Courage to Confront and Challenge. Longmont, CO: Rocky Mountain Press.

Summary of book and basic concepts

What makes a good business leader? When asked this question rhetorically, one can almost hear the familiar strains of a popular NBC sitcom in the background, followed with the resounding stentorian tones of 'you're fired.' However, according to Risk Leadership: The Courage to Confront and Challenge by Curtis l. Brungardt & C.B. Crawford, true business leadership has little to do with swaggering and posturing. Rather, quite often, true leadership less do with domination than it does with understanding what must be done.

It is the lower level employees of a company whom often have a clearer idea of how things work, Crawford and Brungardt suggest. First and foremost, one must ask, when looking at how a company structure can function, who can become the change elements over the course of the company's next several years, to ensure the company remains competitive? Change elements are people who are willing to challenge conventional assumptions of the corporate culture and to view and then implement things in an innovative fashion. Contrary to popular assumptions generated by media portrayals of business and Wall Street, most real change agents are not the recognized leadership and power figures that are dominating the corporate letterhead. Change elements are usually not CEOs and CFOs. Rather, change elements take the guise of low and mid-level employees, who see where innovative cost cutting can take place, and where true personnel reshuffling can create innovative networks of creative minds.

Thus, the authors throw into the arena of questioning conventional assumptions of their own, challenging question -- is leadership an appointed position or is leadership a personal, human quality? They suggest leaders, true leaders, are those who recognize weaknesses of contemporary change models of the company, regardless of their titles or allocated power. In other words, leadership is something one does, rather than is something one is awarded in title, like a salary.

True change, says Crawford and Brungardt, is seldom top-down. Top-down change usually just reinforces the status quo with cosmetic or what they call "quick fix" thinking solutions.

And why should it not -- after all, it is usually the status quo that has put the current leadership structure in power. Why should the leader of a company wish things to change drastically, as it is in his or her own self-interest, by and large, that the boat not be rocked, that things stay the same. It is the bottom of the company that has a true interest in seeing things change and for innovations to be put into real and concrete action.

The Risk Leadership Model, rather than suggesting that risk is something to be 'managed' as in risk management, a popular course in the MBA curriculum, instead suggests that risky undertakings should be encouraged if such risks have the creative potential to reap dividends for the company. Rather than risk management, which usually stifles innovation in the name of conservative and steady profiteering, Brungardt and Crawford say, risk leadership is called for, especially when an organization must be truly transformed to survive. An organization must take a risk in a calculated, planned, and intelligent fashion.

Strengths and weaknesses of the book

This stress upon the need for leaders to be creative is one of the books great strengths, as its empowering democratic approach. A lower level employee, perhaps lacking a higher degree or a full set of managerial credentials could very easily be inspired to take a risk and deploy his or her skills and knowledge gleaned from working hard in a company. Although the book praises risk, therefore, it also rewards those whom are loyal to a company, who take the time to stay and rise, however slowly, within a particular corporate firmament, as they learn intelligent concepts particular to the industry and company as a whole, and then seek to change such conceptual frameworks, based on past experience. However, it could be argued, although risk may be encouraged from such data for the company, for the individual lower or middle level employee, such a policy is not necessarily an intelligent career strategy by which to follow over the course of his or her career.

It could also be argued that such a conservative approach and lack of job-hopping not only idealizes the lower level perspective, but also begs the question to be asked -- if individuals whom are in such occupations tend not to take risks and branch out to improve their prospects, how daring can they be in their corporate vision? Furthermore, this model seeks to establish a corporate culture that not only accepts, but also expects, confrontation to enhance problem solving, decision-making, and overall organizational performance through confrontational challenges between employees regarding their ideas. This could create a corporate culture of constant argumentation, and conflict between lower-level employees, all anxious to make their mark through challenging one another in the corporate infrastructure.